Summoned to a patient living up the coast, Devon enjoyed his temporary freedom. In the brilliant sunshine, an extra spring rose to his step for good fortune smiled down on him. He looked out to the windswept sea and counted his blessings, gold to buy his freedom, Dooley’s confirmation of a skiff to carry him away. His crew of slaves came with talent, a shipwright, a cooper, a gunner, but of most importance, a navigator to lead them through a desert of waters. Bloodsmythe and twelve others had been carefully recruited. Young Johnnie, Old John, Robert Ames had all joined the bid for liberty, secretly separating into one hut within the stockade to make their plans. A ladder had been built, concealed in the rafters to scale their prison walls and win the open reaches of the forest. All would be accomplished with silent tread for not one footfall could be detected by the guards or those they left behind.
Except for Jarvis and King James, he held no ill will to mankind, not even Claire. Since his argument with her that last day at the hospital, he had not clapped eyes on her. Did she not remind him, he was a slave? He considered it odd, in his present happy state, even his anger against her diminished.
He thought of her often and wished her well, little did it assuage the increasing desire he felt for her. Their association could go nowhere, and he contented himself with the rationalization of the way things existed in the world. He−a slave and she−nobility, a social chasm as wide as the ocean separating them. Devon’s fists clenched. He remained far from content. With every ounce of desperation, he wanted her. He sought all her goodness. It was insanity.
His enslavement created degenerate needs in him. Some island ladies offered easy sampling. But he did not choose them. When he was released, pathetically by his own hand, he hadn’t suffered from this constant torture and need. It was Claire who created the constant torture and need. It was Claire who created the degenerate in him. It was surely, Claire.
On the other side of a steep sandy bluff, he arrived in sight of a small hut, crouched between a knot of swaying palms, descending steeply in front to the sea, and sweeping away at the top in heavy forests. He speculated upon its occupant, desiring its chosen remoteness a good jaunt from town. With curiosity, he contemplated the open door. A triangle of sunlight splashed onto an interior planked floor. No signs of life stirred. Under further consideration, it seemed vacant. Believing he’d been sent by Jarvis’s servant on a fool’s errand, he knocked, and then entered, his eyes adjusting from the bright light of day to darkness. He sensed a presence. Alert, his senses fathomed an alarm. To his right, stood a table, laid with white linen, hosting a basket, two wine glasses and a bottle of wine. He thought that strange. Summoned to treat a very ill patient, it appeared the tenant planned a small celebration. Still, his instincts warned him. The air ceased to shift. A barely discernible footfall padded from the back room. He turned. An apparition glided toward him. Devon stared.
Claire. Never had he seen her look so beautiful, so soft and feminine and−alluring. She wore a white clinging robe, her hair pinned upon her head, with graceful tendrils escaping. She stepped before him, the gown outlining every line of her body. Impulse roared through his veins.
He frowned. “What is this game you play?” He remained concerned with his own problem of escape−his survival.
Her fingers slowly pulled the pins from her hair. When she shook it out, her breasts rose and fell with the movement. Devon’s hands convulsed into fists, then he forced them to relax.
Beneath his stare, color heightened on her cheeks, turning nearly as rosy as her lips. “To a condemned and desperate man in a faraway gaol, I gave my promise. I offer you full payment of my promise, one full day of conjugal rights. I am honor bound for only that period of time.”
Devon’s mouth went dry, flaring high with long-starved passions, interfering with the remaining hostility he held toward her. Suspicions nagged. Yet his wariness lay in tatters, smothered with his desire. He rejected every instinctive warning.
“To be a woman?” he taunted, enduring her pretty little speech with haughty disdain.
“To know, I will be released from my promise. I want my freedom.”
“I am a slave. I cannot grant your freedom,” he lashed out, bitterness coloring his words.
She cleared her throat. “As I am indebted−I wish to be free of my commitment. When my debt is paid, I will be relieved, for I don’t wish to be obligated to you further.”
Devon swallowed hard for what was being offered. “When I have you, I want you free and willing.” She submitted for all the wrong reasons. He did not want that. Devon looked at her a few moments and smiled. “By my troth, Madame, you amaze me. But I’ll make a deal with you. A gamble on your part−for argument’s purposes, a give and take so to speak. That is, if you are woman enough to take the challenge,” he dared, pleased her anger flared.
“I fear−”
“Aye, but I fear−” He looked around. “Like a boar encircled by hunter and hounds. An overseer, your wretched uncle, beneath the bed? A half dozen guards out in the yard?”
She stiffened. “There is no one here.” She motioned with a sweep of an arm. “But look for yourself, if you like.”
“Never underestimate your uncle.” He looked in the back room, glanced out both doors, before returning. No one.
Devon strived to maintain detachment. All the while, a persistent battle raged against his most primal needs. His muscles tightened in an almost vise-like pain as he checked himself from moving toward her. The promise he had made himself not to touch her disintegrated along with his ability to master his animal passions. She stood there soft…yielding, all for the taking, a fulfillment of every waking dream that had tormented him since he’d first met her. She took a tentative step toward him. Her fingers undid the clasp of her dressing robe. Did her fingers tremble? Did he see her bravado slip for the briefest second? Devon itched to touch the smooth expanse of bare flesh revealed between her breasts. She tossed the garment onto a chair and looked to him.
He tensed−afraid she would dissolve like some faded vision.
He scarcely breathed.
She stood there, beautiful chestnut hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. Her full ripe breasts thrust impudently through the diaphanous material like dark rose buds ready to be plucked. Wholly consumed with her, he memorized every curve, every detail. The gossamer gown molded itself to her, the trimness of her waist melding down over rounded hips, revealing the dark triangle of her womanhood. Like a magnificent goddess, and he, a mere mortal. Devon swallowed, imagining a hundred wicked things from her.
She poured a glass of wine and offered it to him. “I am new at this, so you will have to help me.”
Devon frowned. How many other men had known such a request from her? At the governor’s ball, did they not all cloy after her like dogs behind the butcher’s cart? Devon craved to banish the memory of them from her mind, craved to rub out every last trace of them from her body, if in fact, any had ever touched her. His doubts ate at him.
Her fingers brushed against his as he took the glass from her. Her slight touch bolted through him like lightening. She moved across the room, almost floating, the silky material as transparent as a dragon-tail’s wing, clung and slid with the swaying of her sweetly rounded hips. Devon closed his eyes. Torturous thoughts of long, slow lovemaking aroused him to a fevered pitch, as nothing he had experienced before. He wanted to kiss her there. To taste the sweet saltiness of her skin, to tease his tongue down the soft curvature of her spine. He kicked the door behind him shut.
Claire stirred. Conversation wasn’t working. His voice alone brushed over her skin, deepening her breath.
Or perhaps it was the intimation of privacy and isolation that cultivated a sensual aura.
Or perhaps her hands itched to touch him. She swayed with the need to press her face against his chest, to inhale the earthy male scent of him.
“Perhaps you would like to eat first?” Her voice sounded husky to her ears. A wicked spell wielded and weaved its power over them, sustaining a surreal quality. Carnal desire curled inside her. Claire, nearly naked, breathed a raw feminine power that made her potent. She saw him swallow. His gaze never left her.
She moved to a basket on the table, putting warm buttered bread, slices of roast beef, creamy potatoes, and cheese on a plate. “Come and eat,” she motioned to him.
Devon sat down, swept his booted feet upon a chair and leaned back to watch her. He fingered his fork then placed it down on the table. He folded his arms in front of him and smiled expectantly. “I prefer to be fed.”
Claire closed her eyes and itemized all the reasons to hate this man.
His arrogance.
His recklessness.
The way he chipped away at her defenses, ripping her away from the life she sought for so long, the independence she craved, the peace she desired. His revengeful nature could bury her. She would not let him succeed. What had brought her to this decision? Was it the fear of sharing a matrimonial bed with the likes Teakle or any other lord who vied for her hand that persecuted her? Or guilt and the handmaiden of shame of what she owed her real husband the catalyst that brought her to this place?
She assured herself she could survive with him a little longer, just this day, she promised, and emerge detached with her freedom in place. Claire opened her eyes. She lifted the fork from the table, fighting to remain unmoved. The silk glided over her breasts, her traitorous body responding, her nipples hardening beneath his glare. She saw where his eyes slid, saw his weakness. She stabbed a succulent piece of beef and placed it in his mouth, withdrawing the fork from between his white, even teeth with long protracted deliberateness. He slowly chewed and swallowed with relish, appearing in no hurry other than to idle the day away, so unlike his normal impetuousness.
He remained however, controlled, constrained far more than he would want her to believe. The long muscles in his legs flexed when she bent to spoon in another bite of potatoes. She smiled inwardly. He wasn’t as composed as he wanted to appear. That perception gave her the impetus to proceed.
She could finish this.
Devon tossed her a mango. “Prepare this for me.”
She raised a challenging brow. Without a word she stood there patiently, wifely, peeling a mango. He dreamed for a moment of this domestic side of Claire, imagining a home much like this with children surrounding them. His fanciful musings halted when she bent low and placed a sliver of sweet mango between his lips. Her finger glided across his lip. He sucked; the juice fell to his chin. She patted his face with a cloth.
Was she a seasoned seductress or a young woman sliding for the first time into seduction? Devon forced down the demon of jealousy rising and twisting inside him.
“Why Claire?” He wanted answers.
“You ask too many questions.”
“Will you answer then?”
“No.”
"Some demented fancy to lay with a slave? A way to eradicate boredom?"
“No.” She answered. “I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot think. I want only to be rid of you. To be free of my dreaded promise.”
And what would please Devon right now was having all of Claire. What he desired most was to have what had been denied him for too many God-cursed months. His gaze raked over her, falling to the cleft between her breasts. It would be all so simple to remove her gown. He could remove it in seconds. He could... The air lay thick with the scent of roiling clouds engulfing the sun. As the temperature mounted, Devon worked hard to constrain the fiery urges that flooded him, to keep himself from simple rape.
He moved to her then, the front legs of his chair hitting the floor like a shot, so quickly he saw her intake of breath.
“Do not move,” he ordered.
With no opposition from her, he reached up and gently pushed at the silky straps atop Claire’s shoulders. She shivered as the wispy gown glided down her body and pooled at her feet, totally exposing her to his view. He peeled the last barrier away from her, completely naked now, Claire covered herself. He moved her hands to her sides. Her nipples grazed the rough linen of his shirt.
“Never, ever cover yourself, Claire,” he rasped, and stood back. “I need to see your loveliness, to brand it on my mind forever. For I may never see you again.”
Trapped in a whirl of heady arousal, she paid that foretelling thought no mind. Hot eyes scanned her, he raised his finger and let it trail hotly from the cleft of her throat, down between the valley of her breasts. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the straw cot in the back room where he lay her down with reverence. He splayed his hands on both sides of her face, lifted it ever so lightly, until her eyes met his.
“Is this what you want, Claire?” He commanded her complete attention. He was giving her a way out. A choice to stop this madness. But how did she tell him of her own struggles? The reaffirmation of all she knew to be true and cruel about life, about her own existence, destined for precious little happiness.
Claire could scarcely speak. “It is complicated. I want to experience what it is between a man and a woman−so I have chosen you. I am afraid. You will not hurt−”
She wondered at his frown.
“Do you think me some untamed beast, Madame Blackmon?” He took a curl of her hair and pressed it between his fingers, letting its silk glide to the ends.
“Are you sure of this day−of wifely duty?”
Shirking out of his shirt, Claire reveled in the lean muscular lay of his chest, arms and shoulders. She longed to run her hands across his skin, to glide her fingers over every muscle and sinew of him. Her gaze followed the line of hair rising from beneath his breeches to his chest, admiring his trim waist and the width of his shoulders. As he removed his boots, pulsing heat spread between her legs. He would know what to do to feed the increasing ache there.
Claire licked her lips. He watched her with hunger. A slight sheen lit his body, sleek, muscular, and strong, without the excess bulk conspicuous of nobility. He finished shedding his breeches, and her eyes widened, riveted on his manhood, impressive and frightening. Were all men as magnificently endowed? She wondered.
“I will be tender with you, Claire,” he promised.
His gentleness was her undoing, for she grew terrified and excited. “Know, Claire, this is a time for sharing, not taking. It is a time for loving. But what would happen if something occurred to change us forever? That perhaps we are ruled by some unknown force, something opposed to chance, dominated by some unseen power that rules our destinies.”
Claire trembled too fevered with wanting to sort the implication of his words.
Devon took her into his arms, pillowing his head in the veil of her hair. He smelled wonderful. Clean, strong, healthy male, free of the cloying perfumes Sir Teakle used. He smelled of the outdoors, the sea and sweat. Both gazed into each other’s eyes, awed by the majesty of the moment, both understanding and yearning for so much more.
“Time flies on restive wings, Claire, but I promise this day something eternal will happen to us.” He brushed her hair with his fingertips. “How many times have I counted just to touch you? Now you are here in my arms, your warmth and sweet scent to abuse me even more.”
With incredible perceptiveness, she sensed his vulnerability and reached up to stroke his cheek, the bristles of a day’s growth of beard, rough against her fingertips. In a shivering trance of confusion, Claire stared at his lean tanned face while her uncertain mind superimposed other, gentle memories of him. The way he took her hand in the gaol, the sense of right and intimation of trust, a refuge from all her fears. She remembered the night of the ball, secluded in the governor’s garden, and him pointing out the stars. The way he listened to all the wrongs inflicted on her. His gentleness in caring for her cut hand, his gaze riveted on her with all the tenderness of the world. There existed a million different things about him that she held to her heart.
Claire felt the hard boldness of him, pressed to her side, saw the smoldering flames in his eyes. He bent to take her lips, searing a trail down her throat and shoulder. A warm hand closed over her breast, caressing in circles then capturing a nipple and squeezing it between his fingers before trailing to her next breast. She reached up and smoothed her hands over his shoulders, feeling his heat like a hot iron beneath her fingertips. And when she found the raised weal’s on his upper left back, she stopped and her eyes grew big. “What is it?”
He shrugged. “Courtesy of your uncle.”
“Oh, Devon.” She kissed the scars, a soft caress to heal him.
He crushed her to him, his hands exploring the hollows of her back and down over her hips, automatically she curled into the curve of his body. Her breasts tingled against the muscles of his chest. His hands and lips were everywhere, the gentle massage sending currents of desire through her. His mouth moved to her breast, his tongue caressed her sensitive swollen nipple. His hand seared a path down her abdomen and onto her thigh. He stroked there and she groaned into his mouth, pushing her hips into his hand. His palm sought the warmth of her woman’s mound, circling her wet cleft. Urging her thighs further apart, he slid his fingers into her.
“Let me ready you, Claire.” His deep voice slid along her veins like warm honey.
His mouth came down on her, sapping all her strength, making her boneless while he plied her intimately with his fingers, withdrawing and sinking with divine mastery over some unnamed edge. She writhed beneath him, her traitorous body arching toward the power of his ever present fingers. She could not get enough of him; her impatience grew to explosive proportions, his expert touch driving her to higher levels of ecstasy. She cried out for release, exploding in a downpour of fiery sensations.
“Devon.” She lay there in a gasping heap, her arm still trapped beneath his weight.
He laughed. “That is just a measure to prepare you. But there is much more that I intend to do to you to pleasure you. I smell your woman scent heavy about me. I sense your need. I will teach you, and you will remember me forever. There will be no one else, my dear wife.”
And she was startled by the chill that snaked down her spine from his bidding.
“Think of your body controlled by me, release all your inhibitions, Claire. I will mark your body. It will no longer belong just to you.”
`if she hadn’t heard the unsteadiness in his voice. But Claire ached too much down there to fight him. She needed, no…demanded release again. Devon was the only one able to fill that void. She did not want any more words from him and grew bold, capturing his manhood in her hand, she wickedly stroked him.
“Ah Claire, you do not know what a dangerous game you play,” he rasped. “But perhaps my sweet wife is more experienced than I think.”
He nudged her legs apart and entered her.
Devon thrust slowly into her with incredible control, playing at the mouth of her sex. Each time he penetrated a little further, stretching through her unbelievable tightness. Her arms slipped about his neck, letting him know what a vixen she was, but her eyes were shut tight. He poised ready to give her pleasure if it killed him, but it was an agony for him to keep this endless pace. Slow and easy, he reminded himself. He thrust again. Devon froze. With superhuman strength, he stopped, his manhood hard upon the barrier of her womanhood. “Christ, Claire you are a virgin?”
Her eyes flew open at his accusation. “I-I told you, I wanted you to be the one.”
In agony Devon did not move, did not dare too. He closed his eyes and bent his forehead to hers, breathing heavily. He sure as hell needed release. Needed to plow himself into the whole inside of her. He damned Claire for not telling him, but niggling in the back of his mind, she had. Most of all he damned himself for doubting her.
“Contrary to what you might think of me, Claire, I would not take you and then walk away. I’m not without conscience.”
Claire cradled his face between her palms and with heart-rending tenderness, said, “I want it to be you, Devon. Only you.” Devon’s control was destroyed with her words. He started to move again. She thrust her loins against him, and it was his final undoing, he pulled all the way back, and−
The door slammed open like an explosion. Lily rushed inside.
“Christ!” shouted Devon, grabbing the sheets to cover their nakedness.
“You have to leave now!” Lily’s cheeks flamed red as the flush of dawn when she witnessed their state of undress, the act so clear.
Like a bucket of icy water thrust over his head, Devon drew back. “What is the meaning of this?”
Lily froze. Her mouth open, she turned away. “Jarvis is coming. He discovered Claire ordered a slave to clean the cottage this morning and that you had been ordered here. He put two and two together. He will kill you, Devon if he finds you here. I am afraid of what he will do to Claire.”
Lily picked up Claire’s dress and tossed it to her. “My horse is tied up in the back along the path. Hurry!” She tossed his breeches to him. She fled into the other room. Devon jerked on his breeches. Claire threw on her dress. Devon listened to the clink of glasses as Lily packed up any evidence to be seen. Horses approached. Men shouted.
“You need to leave. Now!” Lily hissed.
Without a word, he turned, yanked on his shirt, scooped up his bag, and followed Claire out the back door. Claire led him down a path, a sea of ferns waved against their legs; her uncle’s pounding on the cottage door reverberating through the forests. A flock of yellow-billed parrots flew up to the sky. They remained undiscovered. Lily intervened, answering Jarvis’s loud inquiries.
“You must go,” Claire bid him.
He didn’t budge. “How do I know Jarvis will not harm you?” He would not see her again. He planned to escape the next night. Someday, he vowed, he would return for her. He grabbed her, kissed her long, soulfully, savagely, until the blood pounded in his brain. “We met in the gaol and on this island. Did you ever entertain that divine interference with the ordinary course of nature would have such consequence? That an attempt to find a cause for such fate to be the result of more than mere chance? I ask you to think about the possibility, Claire.”
He hated the thought of parting from her for even a minute. She wanted him, and if she weren’t so damned stubborn, she would have known it long ago. She was his wife and he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted to fill her days with joy and her nights with pleasure, until she loved him as much as he loved her.
As a slave, his life was done. He could offer her nothing. To survive he’d have to leave her behind. It remained the only logical thing to do, and he hated the very thought of that logic.
Lily’s voice grew shrill, warning them.
“There’s nothing more,” Claire said, though it was on the tip of her tongue to beg him to whisk her away, to escape to some distant place, to take her far from the troubles that plagued her. But there was no such heaven, only a wild imagining. Her life was no fairy tale. She remained trapped. There arose no knight in shining armor to come to her rescue. “What I want is for you to go,” she said. “You must go before my uncle finds you. Take Lily’s horse. Oh please before you− we−are discovered. You must leave!”
Devon straddled the nag and paused. “Someday, I promise I will finish what we started.” He smiled wickedly and bent over for one last kiss. He turned the nag, gave a sharp tap with his heels. She watched the forest consume him. He was gone, vanished, with not even a bush stirring on the side of the forest to mark his passage. Claire hesitated lost in a wave of confused emotions, unable to explain the painful knot in her throat. Was it fate brought on by more than mere chance that brought them together?
Her hands flew to her face. She had lain with a slave, a felon. Oh the things he’d done to her. The pink rose from her toes to her hair roots. Was the bargain complete? As far as she was concerned the promise was fulfilled.